Blake Hall
North Carolina District Court Judge Lou Olivera served in the Gulf War, so he knows how hard it can be to transition out of a military career. This goes double for service members who came with physical and mental wounds.
Olivera has met former Green Beret Sgt. Joseph Serna several times in his court. Serna is enrolled in a veteran’s treatment court program headed by Olivera in order to battle his alcoholism and manage his post-traumatic stress disorder, and the judge has monitored his progress in official court hearings 25 times.
When Serna admitted to Olivera that he had lied about taking a urine test in a previous meeting, the judge sentenced him to one day in jail. But he didn’t intend of Serna to serve alone.
The judge drove Serna to the jail in a neighboring county.
“When Joe first came to turn himself in, he was trembling,” Olivera told the Fayetteville Observer. “I decided that I’d spend the night serving with him.”
“Where are we going, judge?” Serna asked, the Observer’s Bill Kirby Jr., reported Wednesday.
“We’re going to turn ourselves in,” the judge said.
As Serna sat down on the cot in his cell, WRAL reported, he heard the door rattle open again and saw Olivera standing before him. Olivera sat down beside him. Someone came and locked the door.
“This was a one-man cell so we sat on the bunk and I said, ‘You are here for the entire time with me?’” Serna told WTVD. “He said, ‘Yeah that’s what I am doing.’”
Serna earned three Purple Hearts and completed two combat tours in Afghanistan. Olivera chose to serve Serna’s short jail sentence with him in order to help ease the former Green Beret’s anxiety and avoid triggering his PTSD. The two reportedly had a “father-son conversation” about their mutual struggles and swapping stories about their military careers.
You’re a good one, Olivera.